The Dark Knight Rises: Review
With The Dark Knight Rises Christopher Nolan completes his Batman trilogy that started in 2005 with Batman Begins and was continued 2008’s The Dark Knight. I will go ahead and answer the big question right away, how does this new movie compare to Nolan’s first two Batman movies? The Dark Knight Rises is not as good as The Dark Knight (you can argue that not only is The Dark Knight the best Batman movie it is also one of the best comic book movies made), at the same time I think this new movie is as good as if not a little better than Batman Begins.
I really enjoyed how The Dark Knight Rises connected all three movies together in a way that made it feel like these films are truly part of a connected trilogy, and are not just three Batman movies that were made by the same people and featuring the same cast. References are made to the League of Shadows, Ra’s Al Ghul, and Bruce Wayne’s connection to them from Batman Begins. And from The Dark Knight we are able how Batman’s sacrifice to uphold Harvey Dent’s positive image has led to laws that have helped eliminate most organized crime in Gotham, and how the death of Rachel Dawes has lead Bruce Wayne to hang up the cape and cowl and now live as a recluse in his mansion.
As with the previous two Batman films the cast is once again top notch. The returning cast of Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) all do a wonderful job bringing their characters to life and adding new depth to their characters based upon their experiences over the course of the series. This brings us to the new cast members Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle), Tom Hardy (Bane), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (John Blake), and Marion Cotillard (Miranda Tate) who all do good work in this film though to me Joseph Gordon-Levitt really stood out to me the most (apparently Christopher Nolan knows how to bring out the best in him as he was fantastic in Inception as well).
The characters of Bane and Selina Kyle (Catwoman) have been altered from their comic book roots a bit to have these characters fit into the cinematic Batman universe that these 3 films have created. Bane maintains his intelligence and most of his strength while removing his superhuman strength given to him by a drug called venom. For this movie they have simply set up Selina Kyle to be a very skilled cat burglar and they never refer to her as “Catwoman”. I had no problem with these changes because they fit within the way that these movies have been set up, and overall still resemble their comic book counterparts.
The film does have some flaws that keep it from reaching the same level of greatness that The Dark Knight achieved. This movie starts off very slowly, and at times I found myself wondering what was going on. Thankfully the movie picks up speed in the 2nd act and eventually all of the pieces start fitting together. Another minor problem I had with the movie was that I did not find Bane to be as compelling a villain as the Joker was in the previous film, he just does not strike the same level of fear and dread in the audience. Tom Hardy does a good job as Bane, but Heath Ledger’s take on the Joker will likely be remembered as one of the greatest movie villains of all time.
The Dark Knight Rises is not the best Batman movie ever, and it is not even the best comic book movie of this summer (that award still goes to The Avengers), however it is still an excellent movie that highly recommend seeing. I was very satisfied with how Christopher Nolan and company completed their Batman trilogy, and I think that future film makers will have a very difficult task in trying to make future Batman movies as the bar has been set very high.
I am giving The Dark Knight Rises 4 ½ Popcorn Buckets.
